As described in a hilarious Kickstarter video, Massive Chalice takes inspiration from games like X-Com and Final Fantasy Tactics for its basic turn-based, positional combat. The main twist is that characters eventually age and die, but not before imparting their experience and characteristics to a new generation of heroes that will serve in their place. This is intended to give the game more longevity and replayability through some vaguely Rogue-like randomization.

Some might worry that this new project means Double Fine is taking its focus off of Broken Age, the game that was being sold as the Double Fine Kickstarter just over a year ago and is currently targeted for a September release. Double Fine is quick to answer this concern by noting that Broken Age development is only using one-third of the company's staffers at the moment. A totally separate team will work on Massive Chalice under Brad Muir, a veteran of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend who is just coming off a year fruitlessly trying to pitch co-op action game Brazen to traditional developers.

As of this writing (less than 24 hours into the funding effort), the Massive Chalice Kickstarter has already raised over $180,000 from nearly 5,000 backers that paid at least $20 for the game and one backer that pledged $1,000 to get a chance to fly to San Francisco and give direct feedback on the pre-release game. It should be noted that this time around, Double Fine's $725,000 goal is almost double the $400,000 the company was seeking for its Adventure Kickstarter last year. Of course, back then, such a massive Kickstarter-backed game was an unproven concept. Today, it's looking more and more like the preferred funding model for developers like Double Fine.

Promoted Comments

One of the interesting things crowdfunding is doing is bringing more knowledge of the development cycle to the consumer... I suspect you'll be seeing vastly more informed comments about the industry as a whole five years from now than what we're seeing today.

One thought occurs to me: they may be using Kickstarter as a metric to find out what their customers want without having to spend a lot of money on advertising and market analysis. Just bring your creative team together with a concept for a game, put together some preliminary art work and an estimated budget, and throw the whole thing up on Kickstarter. If your customers want it, they fund it, if not, they don't, and you haven't gone halfway through development on a title that's going to flop due to lack of interest. Also, keeps your creative team busy, and potentially preloads your development pipeline with the next big thing, so you're not paying people to sit on their hands.

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

It depends on the usage of resources I think. I recall reading a bit about the odd development cycle/movement of resources and people that game devs go through given the nature of their product. If a company with credibility in the industry says it has the resources to do it, I'm willing to gamble twenty bucks.

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

It depends on the usage of resources I think. I recall reading a bit about the odd development cycle/movement of resources and people that game devs go through given the nature of their product. If a company with credibility in the industry says it has the resources to do it, I'm willing to gamble twenty bucks.

inXile did the same thing with Wasteland 2 and Torment, and it makes quite a bit of sense to me. The people most heavily involved in the early stages of design are not the same people who will be most heavily involved in the final stages of implementation and testing, so it makes sense to have multiple projects on an overlapping development cycle.

Not all of the folks involved with the first half of making a game (writers, etc.) are needed for the second half. Either you lay them off and then bring them back when needed, pay them when you don't have anything in the pipeline, or lock and load a new project even as you are assembling the last big thing. If you don't have something in the pipeline, you find yourself laying off your programmers and testers post launch. What a downer!

To do the necessary car analogy, you don't have the guys who assemble engines waiting for the engine they built previously to be put into a car before they start working on the next one.

Here's my worry about this: I've played Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and Stacking, and would say without reservation that Double Fine are aces at world-building and dialog/story. But they're not that great at gameplay. Brutal Legend was a confused mess at times, and Psychonauts was basically a platformer and those are tough to mess up. Here they're attempting a tactical strategy game, something that generally means a lot of complex gameplay depth, without anything on their resume to suggest they'll do it particularly well.They're a great outfit, and I think they're theoretically capable of it. But I remember how messy the RTS-like parts of Brutal Legend were, and how there's nothing here but concept art. It's enough to make me more than a little cautious.

One of the interesting things crowdfunding is doing is bringing more knowledge of the development cycle to the consumer... I suspect you'll be seeing vastly more informed comments about the industry as a whole five years from now than what we're seeing today.

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

They are using Kickstarter as a constant funding source. My bet is that their money has probably run out from the last big crowd hullaballoo they were doing (in conjunction with Humble Bundle, I think) and they need more money to continue funding a team to do stuff from an earlier funder.

DoubleFine is going to collapse under its own crowd-funded hubris at some point.

That's kind of my point, hence the point about the studio wanting to do it makes sense, but the willingness of people to invest doesn't necessarily, since it's quite a gamble.Of course, on the other hand you could say that if they weren't using these people on a new game they would either need to fire them, or would be more likely to go under due to having underutilised staff, which is why they want constant funding, but now you've got 2 games that could never make it out if it doesn't all come off smoothly/they run out of money.

They already got money and haven't shown they can use it effectively yet, now they are asking for more money for something else.

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

They are using Kickstarter as a constant funding source. My bet is that their money has probably run out from the last big crowd hullaballoo they were doing (in conjunction with Humble Bundle, I think) and they need more money to continue funding a team to do stuff from an earlier funder.

DoubleFine is going to collapse under its own crowd-funded hubris at some point.

They are gambling at this point but that is business. They are risking their independence not the entire studio. They could have pitched this to a traditional publisher or they could go kickstarter. They are trying to cut as many ties as possible from publishers but that takes time and money. The first KS game Broken Age is coming out i've seen places say Sept this year. They are going to be able to begin reaping their kickstarter benefits (IMHO) the end of the year maybe a month of so sooner, but that relies heavily on when Broken Age gets released. They did spend more than planned/the kickstarter provided but they pulled money from brutal legend PC sales and merch, etc to help keep people working on the game longer before getting pulled off to other projects or funding another small project like middle manager of justice

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

They are using Kickstarter as a constant funding source. My bet is that their money has probably run out from the last big crowd hullaballoo they were doing (in conjunction with Humble Bundle, I think) and they need more money to continue funding a team to do stuff from an earlier funder.

DoubleFine is going to collapse under its own crowd-funded hubris at some point.

They are gambling at this point but that is business. They are risking their independence not the entire studio. They could have pitched this to a traditional publisher or they could go kickstarter. They are trying to cut as many ties as possible from publishers but that takes time and money. The first KS game Broken Age is coming out i've seen places say Sept this year. They are going to be able to begin reaping their kickstarter benefits (IMHO) the end of the year maybe a month of so sooner, but that relies heavily on when Broken Age gets released. They did go over budget but they pulled money from brutal legend PC sales and merch , etc to help keep people working on the game longer before getting pulled off to other projects.

That's kind of my point, this seems like a series of poor management decisions. Especially by expanding the traditional development process to only be funded by blind and deaf fanboys via Kickstarter. Let's not pretend the biggest stuff on Kickstarter are being funded by well-informed investors.

One thought occurs to me: they may be using Kickstarter as a metric to find out what their customers want without having to spend a lot of money on advertising and market analysis. Just bring your creative team together with a concept for a game, put together some preliminary art work and an estimated budget, and throw the whole thing up on Kickstarter. If your customers want it, they fund it, if not, they don't, and you haven't gone halfway through development on a title that's going to flop due to lack of interest. Also, keeps your creative team busy, and potentially preloads your development pipeline with the next big thing, so you're not paying people to sit on their hands.

Anyway, I funded their first game and the concept for this game sounds interesting (at least the name-dropping, anyway). But I don't think they deserve more of my money until they deliver on the first donation.

inXile covered this topic pretty well during the Torment campaign. The money raised for Project X goes toward Project X. That's the whole point of stretch goals - rather than dumping extra cash into a general slush fund, you use it to beef up the project, which in turn means that one project is still eating all your Kickstarter money. If you want to get another project going - and companies absolutely need to have multiple irons in the fire, or you end up with 18-month waits between releases - you need it to be funded separately.

I think the only games of theirs I haven't tried were the more kid oriented ones... Sesame Street and Happy Action Theater, etc, but I've tried the rest. The quality has been such on every one that I'd gladly back them again. I'll do it the moment I get home from work.

inXile covered this topic pretty well during the Torment campaign. The money raised for Project X goes toward Project X. That's the whole point of stretch goals - rather than dumping extra cash into a general slush fund, you use it to beef up the project, which in turn means that one project is still eating all your Kickstarter money. If you want to get another project going - and companies absolutely need to have multiple irons in the fire, or you end up with 18-month waits between releases - you need it to be funded separately.

And multiple projects have had stretch goals overreach and end up eating almost all of their funding.

One of the interesting things crowdfunding is doing is bringing more knowledge of the development cycle to the consumer... I suspect you'll be seeing vastly more informed comments about the industry as a whole five years from now than what we're seeing today.

So does that now mean Arsians know how much it costs to develop a game? Next up, kickstarter for the rest of the content industry.

Seems like the sort of thing where you would wait for one game to launch before backing the second one, as an investor/purchaser.

Obviously the studio wants to be developing both at the same time.

They are using Kickstarter as a constant funding source. My bet is that their money has probably run out from the last big crowd hullaballoo they were doing (in conjunction with Humble Bundle, I think) and they need more money to continue funding a team to do stuff from an earlier funder.

DoubleFine is going to collapse under its own crowd-funded hubris at some point.

They are gambling at this point but that is business. They are risking their independence not the entire studio. They could have pitched this to a traditional publisher or they could go kickstarter. They are trying to cut as many ties as possible from publishers but that takes time and money. The first KS game Broken Age is coming out i've seen places say Sept this year. They are going to be able to begin reaping their kickstarter benefits (IMHO) the end of the year maybe a month of so sooner, but that relies heavily on when Broken Age gets released. They did go over budget but they pulled money from brutal legend PC sales and merch , etc to help keep people working on the game longer before getting pulled off to other projects.

That's kind of my point, this seems like a series of poor management decisions. Especially by expanding the traditional development process to only be funded by blind and deaf fanboys via Kickstarter. Let's not pretend the biggest stuff on Kickstarter are being funded by well-informed investors.

Ah yes the investors. People that are bringing us COD/BF/Crysis/so on bazillion. Just what the gaming world needs, more dumbed down to hell and back games that are copies of each other. Look at the MMO market. How well is it going for all those wow clones. People are getting tired of what investors are providing. Players on the other hand actually tend to know what kind of games they like. I supported wasteland 2 because I want isometric view and no mother fucking 3d with more camera issues than anything else. Chances of an investor investing in to such a game is zero as they all know it has to be 3D. After all who can say no to tons of camera issues.

There is just so much stagnation in the gaming world. Even the critically acclaimed, 'artistic' BioShock Infinite was just window dressing on yet -ugh- another -groan- first person shooter. As incongruous as the big guns , blood and guts were to the story, there they were. It's easy to imagine the inclusion of standard FPS mechanics along with the now typical gorefest was required before the publisher would agree to fund the project.

The only way we're going to get games with an independent vision is to fund them. Clearly, the big publishers refuse.

I'm not even a huge turn-based strategy fan, but DoubleFine makes unique, and generally good games. Vote with your wallet, stop buying the big budget FPS and buy things like this. Hoping their next Kickstarter is Psychonauts 2.

Is this really as simple as. You could always pre order a game. Now you pre order, they get your money earlier instead of waiting for game release.

Except that's not what Kickstarter is at all. You fund a game, but there's no guarantee you'll get anything. When you pre-order, you get a game or you get your money back.

Speaking as someone who has probably lost money on a crowd-funding site (i backed a campaign of someone who was recently arrested for trying to put a hit on his estranged wife) Crowd funding isn't investing. But 20 bucks isn't an investment level of expenditure, either, and is money I can lose, with no regrets, for being a patron of the arts.

I'm far from experienced with tactics games but after reading their description of the game it sounds like the game mechanics has a very scary resemblance to the MMO-Tactics Einherjer (which, if I'm not mistaken, is originally a Japanese title made by a studio that specialises in browser-based MMOs that have interesting mechanics).

I'm not against recycling good game mechanics but this almost feels like asking for money to repackage someone else's idea in better graphics and storyline instead of giving innovation to the gaming community.

Ok this sounds awesome. I'm worried that DF might run out of liquid assets, they seem to be in a money crunch- as indicated in the documentary as will as alluded to by their recent Humble Bundle. They've lasted longer than THQ did following their Humble Bundle, so perhaps the canary isn't as deep in the coal mine as it appears from an outsider perspective.

At the risk of inciting flamewars, when I think of developers that have a record of releasing quality, original games I won't be disappointed in (aka safe bets):

1. Blizzard2. Firaxis3. Valve

After that, Double Fine leads my "best of the rest," and I'm happy to kick them some money for continuing to make good stuff. (Honorable mention to id, Rockstar, Bethesda, and Creative Assembly, who make great games but not necessarily original ones.)

I'm far from experienced with tactics games but after reading their description of the game it sounds like the game mechanics has a very scary resemblance to the MMO-Tactics Einherjer (which, if I'm not mistaken, is originally a Japanese title made by a studio that specialises in browser-based MMOs that have interesting mechanics).

I'm not against recycling good game mechanics but this almost feels like asking for money to repackage someone else's idea in better graphics and storyline instead of giving innovation to the gaming community.

"repackaging someone else's idea in better graphics and storyline"vs"recycling good game mechanics"

Seems prettymuch the same to me. Is your objection, then, that they didn't come up with the good mechanic first? Do the developers of MMO-Tactics Einherjer hold a patent on their game mechanic software? Are you pro patent troll? (I'm sorry about that last question... wasn't my intent when commenting to go there... but now that I've typed it, I don't see where else it could have gone.)

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.